Sunday, November 14, 2010

'Tis The Season For Nog

I saw the most beautiful thing today.  It was my wife... standing next to a case of eggnog in the grocery store.  A sure sign that the holiday season is rapidly descending upon us, kinda like that feeling you get when you know that you are about to get a bad head cold and the inevitable sniffles and body aches are just around the corner.

One of the few bright spots of the pending holidays is the sweet elixir known as eggnog (another being short bread cookies)

So what is 'nog' anyway?  There are a couple theories on that.  Some believe that eggnog came over from Europe to America, but when it did they started using rum instead of wine.  As a result the name was egg'n'grog, which got shortened over the years to eggnog.   Another theory is that the nog is short form for noggin, which is a drink cup made from wood used in the old days to serve beverages during a meal.

Another interesting bit of trivia is that the french for eggnog is 'lait de poule', which directly translates into english as 'milk of the hen', or chicken milk.

Whatever the derivation, all I can be sure of is that I am looking forward to a couple months of enjoying the  sweet noggy elixir... with rum.  And that is a Good Thing(tm).